The history of Jinling folding fan

Folding fan is one of the famous traditional handicrafts in Nanjing. As early as the Song Dynasty, Nanjing's fan-making industry was very famous.

In the early Ming Dynasty, after Ming Taizu Judy ascended the throne in Nanjing, she enjoyed many folk handicrafts in the south of the Yangtze River. He found that the folding fan was flexible, smart and beautiful, and easy to carry, so he ordered the palace craftsmen to make folding fans and absorb foreign technology. Since then, bamboo folding fans have spread all over the world from the inside out. The custom of using folding fans has always influenced the Qing Dynasty for three centuries, both in the court and among the people. Today, the south bank of Qinhuai River in Nanjing still retains the ancient place name "Fan".

Ming and Qing Dynasties were the heyday of Jinling folding fans. At that time, Nanjing was the imperial examination place of several provinces in the south of the Yangtze River. Every big exam year, all the soldiers who come to Nanjing to take the imperial examination must buy some high-grade folding fans and bring them back at the end of the scientific examination. In their spare time, they write poems and draw pictures on the fans, or collect them themselves or give them to relatives and friends. Therefore, there are many shops selling Jinling folding fans in Sanshan Street of Confucius Temple, with different textures, specifications and grades. Scholars in the Qing Dynasty called it "polishing, clean and thick paper, buying far away, and high futures prices".

During the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, the shops selling folding fans in the Confucius Temple in the south of Nanjing still had a large sales volume, mainly supplied by farmers in Qixia and Longtan areas of Nanjing. They are busy with farming and come to Nanjing to make folding fans in their spare time. Gu Ying area is the distribution center of folding fan production and processing.

After the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), the people's government organized craftsmen engaged in the fan making industry and set up a fan making factory. A large number of skilled old artists gathered in the factory. The high-grade Jinling folding fan they produced was once an important export commodity of the country at that time, and at the same time, a group of young technical backbones were trained. Nanjing established Jinling Fan Factory in Qixia October People's Commune to produce Jinling folding fans and other kinds of fans, becoming the only area producing Jinling folding fans.

In 2009, Jinling folding fan was listed in the intangible cultural heritage list of Jiangsu Province.